"I'm hate you!" Violet's voice wrenched through the stale air, her blood pulsing as she jabbed a fist into Bishop's side. It was a perfectly calculated hit, a blow that would close to kill any ordinary moonshadower, but Bishop hardly flinched. Instead, he seemed to fly through the air, flashing before her eyes and whipping her to the ground before she even had a chance to react.

Violet groaned, sore, tired, and plastered against the worn mat in defeat. Everything about her ached from their little sparring match while her mind ran wild with vicious thoughts.

"You need to stop screaming when you fight." He noted calmly as he picked himself off the mat. "It's a waste of energy and makes you look desperate." Violet bit her lip bitterly as she picked herself up, leaning back on her elbows. Bishop was breathing heavily, his dark hair streaked with sweat and his face contorted in concentration. Everything about him was that of a predator until even his eyes flew across the sparring room as if he were searching for prey. At least, Violet knew that she had put up a good fight.

Hoisting herself off the ground, she made her way to one of the many benches, exhausted and trying to ignore the hunger gnawing at her stomach. She had eaten a huge breakfast, but that still didn't change the fact that members of The Guard were supposed to eat about twice as much as a normal person. Their bodies were perfectly designed to heal quickly, have better endurance, strength, intelligence, senses, speed, and stealth. The only downside was having to eat twice as much as a normal person or else she'd pass out.

Violet tried to turn her thoughts away from food by plunging her hand into her bag, finding a fresh pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, (besides her armor, she only owned two pairs of navy blue sweats) and a hairbrush. Desperate for a distraction, she began to wrench the brush through her pink hair, taking all her anger out on the thin strands.

"You know, if you just focused a bit more on your fist and a little less on your emotion, you might beat me one day." Bishop sat down next to her, heaving air in between each word.

"Oh, just shut up." She bit. The brush yanked through her hair painfully, but she hardly cared. "I already beat you when I plunged that pie into your face." Bishop stifled a laugh which only made her blood boil more. Sometimes she just couldn't stand his voice.

Bishop opened his mouth in protest, but before a word could leave his mouth, Violet's ears caught the sound of footsteps. Hesitantly, she stared at the door, knowing it was Em before he even walked in the room. Violet's heart hit a weary beat and she lowered the brush as if it were a weapon, watching him like a love struck hawk.

"Well, I've finally finished all the paperwork for our run-in with that dragon-egg thief." Em declared as he strode into the room. Clapping his hands together as a gesture of completion, he narrowed his eyes in a sarcastic glare. "Thanks again for all of your help with that.~"

Violet dropped her gaze, trying not to confuse her bit of guilt with the growing hunger. After all, it wasn't the first time that she had left the boys to all of the paperwork, but she couldn't help herself. She had too much energy and could never sit down long enough to do more than sign her name.

"Anyway, Fae wants us to fix a different problem in Alfheim. Seems like the place is crawling trouble right now."

"Why can't the patrolmen just handle it?" Violet mumbled, sick of dealing with the fine line of jurisdiction. Em grinned, his teasing smile full of beautifully pointed teeth. "We've never had to deal with this many problems at once before. Like, are we getting ready for war or something?"

"Relax Vi." Bishop cut in as he got to his feet. "I'm just graduating in a couple of months and Fae says I need more experience in the field. Plus, we work well in a group."

"Yeah right." Em rolled his eyes. "The only work I do is keeping you two from killing each other."

Violet gave a half-hearted smile, even though she knew it was hardly true. All tasks and missions were given completely based on skills, and each member of The Guard specialized in a certain skill. Since Violet had crammed over 10 languages into her head, Fae had made her a language expert, and she was dragged along on just about any foreign mission.

Bishop's skills were used just about as often as hers. With a Masters in computer science by the time he was 14, The Guard had taken him in with hardly any hesitation. Violet had never asked how he had managed it and didn't plan on asking any time soon. As she saw it, if it was about Bishop, the story was bound to be boring.

But the real puzzle was Em. No matter how much she pestered him, she couldn't figure out how he had come to be in The Guard. His official skill title was Human Culture and Relations Expert, which, before him, had been an open position due to 'lack of candidates.' But over time, she had managed to piece together a rough picture of his past from broken conversations and a bit of research with Bishop.

Em was born to a human family in a human city. His entire life, he was surrounded by their culture and livelihood, completely unaware that he was carrying the moonshadower gene. It wasn't until Fae had asked him to join The Guard that he discovered the truth about his ancestry and his powers.

Still, the explanation did little to satisfy Violet's urge to know. She had no idea what his life was like or how he survived day to day, so Bishop offered to do a bit of research. He wasn't able to find much, but one photo had always stuck in the back of her mind.

It was Em when he was hardly 14 before The Guard had filled his mouth with fangs and pointed his ears. Before they had taught him to fight and kill and to see everything as a threat, before they had given him new eyes and new strength with reinforced bones. Before The Guard had torn him apart and built him up stronger, Em was just a boy with silvery hair and a toothy grin.

And Violet couldn't stop herself from seeing the same innocence in the soldier before her.

~~~

Fae Misha stood calmly in front of them, every ounce of her being that of a soldier. She stood firmly in place until even her breathing was a phantom of a movement, but Violet could see the fear in her eyes. She hardly had to glance at the file to know that the last thing Fae wanted was to put the mission in the hands of students.

"This is insane." Bishop finally glanced up from the paper, his face contorted in disbelief. "Most moonshadowers don't even believe we exist, but this would require us to go into the city...without stealth. Interact with the citizens. We can't risk that."

"And the children..." Em's voice hit a soft note as he buried his nose in the file, the same detail that caught Violet's eye driving him insane. "They'll be terrified."

"It's better they be terrified then dead," Fae spoke firmly, although Violet still found the idea as insane as playing with a volcano mouse. Violet opened her mouth in protest but instead found it dry and empty of reason. She had signed up for risk, hadn't she? She had known she couldn't save everyone when she joined The Guard, right? Feeling all of her argumentation falling away to her own mind, she tucked herself behind the file, going over fact after fact.

"I know you have questions, but I'll explain this as simply as I can." Fae began, opening up her copy of the file to an image of a stocky German girl. Her dark hair fell in greasy locks while her tiny eyes shone like small beacons of the night. "This is Sharise Eckstein. She was born in a small city in Liechtenstein overrun by moonshadowers. Forced to become a soldier to help their war effort. Non-luminescent. She was rescued at 7 years old and brought to Alfheim by Kadri Loft and has been since been taken in by Anna Connolly. There were no reported incidents until last week."

"Honestly, What could a little 14-year-old do that's bad enough for us to deal with it?" Violet couldn't stop the vomit of words that spilled from her lips until Fae met her with a harsh glare.

"She was caught stealing information from Alfheim's biggest school, Dobrá škola, and selling it to what we think was the moonshadower you met in Camelot." Fae's words immediately tore Violet's protest away as realization sunk in. Hostile moonshadower cities were as dangerous as their citizens and were constantly trying to discover where the peaceful cities were. They had everything they needed for their war effort; weapons, training, defenses...but the one thing they were constantly short on was the one thing peaceful cities had.

Soldiers. and they would stop at nothing to take impressionable children away from their home and turn them into mindless weapons.

Violet held back a bitter gasp, realizing just how serious the situation was. Not only had Sharise put her fellow students in danger if the figure was from a hostile city, but she had risked the lives of everyone seeking peace.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Em's voice sounded timid among the wake of the news, rattling Violet in a way she had never realized was possible. Fae turned her eyes to them, every ounce of her as composed as a soldier should be.

"We shut down the school before she can do any more damage. Take Sharise here, question her, and see what leads she can give us. We can't allow this information to leave our cities, or we may have to brace ourselves for a war."

"And our identities?" Bishop spurred the question again, unrelentingly reminding them of their little problem.

"Dealing with our citizens in person is not ideal." Fae's voice was as strong as it was important, each note holding fear and urgency. "Your masks will never come off, your faces never seen. Your identity is your strongest weapon and should be treated as such."

"Now go get your armor on. We don't have much more time to spare."